All Crime Is Personal

perverted-justice

I received three separate e-mails from the same person in regards to the recent debate about Florida predator stings and their worth. Again if you’re just joining us I think they’re awesome and they put bad guys behind bars. The bad guys think they’re a money grab and are putting ‘innocent’ men behind bars. On to the e-mails.

E-mail #1:

I read your article in which you tried to shame a person who tried to tell you about the corruption with Perverted Justice. What that person wrote to you is indeed true. In fact, many of the Perverted Justice members have criminal backgrounds. Eventually, this is going to come back on you trench and I know for a fact Perverted Justice is under investigation right now. You are not telling the full story about situations. You are lying to people. Why don’t you actually investigate instead of writing opinions. If you are Irish-Catholic, then you know that you will be held responsible for what you tell people. Then again, maybe you are part of Perverted Justice yourself.

You got me. You saw through my clever ruse. I am actually Xavier Von Erck, founder of PJ. Except, I’m not. I was about to say we don’t even look alike but it appears that we do dress alike.

Xavier Von Erck

Back to the matter at hand. If this guy actually read what I wrote he would be able to tell that I am actually not a fan of PJ. While I think their intention is good I’m not a fan of internet vigilantism. It’s usually only fueled by knee-jerk outrage. Also now that it’s 2014 I now haven’t written about PJ in seven years.

Is PJ even relevant anymore? Their bread and butter used to be the Yahoo chat rooms and now that they’re gone and To Catch A Predator has been canceled I don’t see why they’re even still around.

Also, I’d rather go to hell for exposing the habits of online predators than being a kiddie toucher.

On to e-mail #2:

By the way, I just read your post from today about catching real predators. That person is exactly right. Real predators aren’t using the internet and children are most certainly not pursuing predators online for months and in some cases years. If you can name me a victim, any victim, who pursued their attacker, I will retract my statement.

Ok, I have to interrupt here because some of what he says is so ludicrous it demands immediate attention. So ‘real’ predators aren’t using the internet? Then for the past 8 years, I’ve been writing about fictitious predators all that time. Huh. Who knew? Also, there’s needs to be some kind of universal sarcasm font.

Also, his challenge for me to name a victim is specious because they don’t release the names of underage sexual abuse victims. Not to mention I doubt he would retract anything he said anyway. Zealots come from all walks of life.

He continues…

There is a reason why you get letters telling you to catch the real predators. It is because the real predators are not being caught and setting people up is not the answer. In fact, if you look into the finances of those stings, you quickly realize stings are being done for money and money alone. Those stings are making things infinitely more dangerous because they are not catching threats at all. Victims don’t pursue and they most certainly don’t invite multiple times. The convictions are only coming because people are forced to plead guilty. You haven’t once reported on the hundreds of those cases that have been thrown out of court or the entrapment verdicts levied against groups such as Perverted Justice.

Again with the PJ obsession. Anyway, police don’t even really need to set up these stings because a lot of times the predators themselves are stupid enough to post ads on craigslist themselves. How many stories have I posted about craigslist creepers that post ads that say things like ‘the younger the better’. You’re absolutely delusional if you think that there are no predators on the internet. You also leave out this thing called grooming which is like a sort of Stockholm Syndrome for the victims of online predators. Again, even if police did initiate talks about sex and you drive somewhere with the thoughts of meeting a minor for sex you get what you deserve.

This argument kind of reminds me of the guys who signed up for the military then tried to quit when they realized they might actually have to go fight a war. They claimed that the recruiters talked them into enlisting. Well, not only did you go down to the recruitment office but, just like most online predators, you could have walked away at any time. When I was graduating high school I would get tons of calls for recruiters. I would tell them that I’m not interested and hung up the phone. Subsequently, if I got an e-mail from a 14-year-old girl wanting to have sex I would delete it and then filter my e-mail so any subsequent e-mails would go straight to the trash. Really, it’s not that hard. Police do not have some kind of special Jedi mind trick or thought control rays. We are responsible for our own actions.

And if any case is thrown out of court or the charges are dropped all someone needs to do is send me an e-mail and I’ll remove the post.

And finally e-mail #3:

Why don’t you publish your full name? What are you hiding “Trench.” I see a couple of lawsuits in your future. In fact, I know they are coming.

Says the guy who signed his e-mail ‘Anonymous’. I do it to have some form of insulation between me and butthurt sex offenders. Also, the threat of a lawsuit after 14 years is still funny to me. If I had a dollar for anytime someone threatened to sue me I’d have enough to pay off a lawsuit settlement.

So, in conclusion, save yourself the keystrokes Junior. You’ll never convince me that what you claim is even remotely true.

I received the following e-mail from someone who is obviously confused about what website this is…

I have been reading your posts. Much of what you write about is so generic and lacks details. Some of it is outright wrong. You are simply not telling the full story. For example, a sting you wrote about involved Perverted Justice. What you failed to tell people was that one of the PJ decoys went after the guy for a year and invited him 5 different times to meet. She was also connected to the Enron fraud scandal in California and has a history of mental illness. In real cases of abuse, the victim does not pursue someone for a year and invite the attacker five times to meet. You also failed to mention that not one of the people entrapped had a previous record. You also failed to tell the public that the town who set the men up only had 1,000 people in it and prior to that never had an incident of abuse. Now, why would a town that small, want to attract predators? Could their be other motives?

Sorry, I had to interrupt here for a second. I mean talk about generic and lacking details. Maybe I should have used the Irony Police graphic.

You often write about your own mental illness. You try to act like you are concerned for people. I understand that you are trying to make yourself feel better by your blogs and tweets. Trying to undo some wrong done to you. But you are actually doing more harm than good. Don’t you realize that you are now the one causing damage to people? Don’t you see the common thread in Perverted Justice, yourself, and those who follow you? All of you have mental illnesses. Unchecked mental illnesses. Just look at your comments!! All of you have mental illnesses.

Don’t you even wonder why all these internet stings are becoming more prevalent? It is because they are cheap, easy, and really nothing has to be proved. You don’t have to prove a single thing. You are just setting people up. Meanwhile, real cases of abuse involving real people are getting ignored. In fact, people like Perverted Justice are the real predators. Why do you think they refuse to turn over their computer equipment and only give the police chat transcripts in MS Word? Why do you think they are so secretive? It is because they are using their activities to cover up what they are doing. Do you even know the backgrounds of the people in that group? Their connection to crime and abuse? The fact the founder himself was brought up on sex charges?

You want to stop child abuse? Motivate your local cop to go down to a women’s shelter and start researching real cases of abuse. Real victims of abuse don’t pursue their attackers. They don’t invite their attackers to meet.

What you are writing is going to get an innocent person killed. In fact, by looking at some of the names you write about, I think you might have already done that. Stop writing about suicide. What you have written in your poorly researched and biased articles has driven people to suicide. The very thing you claim to abhor.

I hope you can live with other people’s suicides on your conscious.

For those of you who may not remember Perverted Justice is/was (are they still around?) a band of internet vigilantes trying to rid the internet of pedophiles and predators. By now you should know how I feel about internet vigilantes but occasionally PJ not only worked with law enforcement as the e-mail writer mentions above but they also worked with the one and only Chris Hansen during the “To Catch a Predator” series of reports on NBC.

But just like he accuses me of being his accusations are not only lacking details but also lacking any proof. I at least link to media reports from which I make my commentary.

Here’s the punchline though. I checked the archives and I haven’t even mentioned PJ in six years. It sounds like to me that someone got busted and rather than taking responsibility blames their problems on PJ.

By the way nice try in trying to guilt me but I had an Irish-Catholic mother. Your guilt trips mean nothing to me.

You know I pick on MySpace, and Xanga, and once in a great while Facebook, but there’s one name that hasn’t been mentioned on this site so far. One that in my personal opinion is more dangerous than Xanga and MySpace put together. That would be LiveJournal.

Check out this interview on MSNBC with Xavier Von Erck, the director of operations of Perverted Justice…

VAN ERCK: Yahoo! recently has closed down all their teen rooms and is trying to keep teens out of their chat services. But still, they don’t have any moderators, and they can still do more.

MySpace is actually trying to play catch-up now with a staff that tries to eliminate predators from their services.

But there’s also other sites out there that are just as dangerous, such as LiveJournal, which does not have any policies restricting pedophiles from their web site. And in fact, they’ve said so publicly.

CARLSON: They have said out loud, pedophiles are welcome to use this site. Not prohibited from it.

VAN ERCK: Nothing in their terms of service restricts them.

CARLSON: Wow. That’s a little bit over the top.

Well, I can do Mr. Van Erck one better than he did in this interview. Not too long ago myself and a few other crime bloggers went after LiveJournal for allowing pedophile communities to proliferate within LiveJournal. This was the response that I got…

Dear LiveJournal User thetrenchcoat,

As explained in our previous response to you, it is neither against the Terms of Service nor illegal to discuss illegal actions, or to admit to having committed them. As long as the content posted does not solicit illegal activity, it is considered allowable under both the Terms of Service and the ideal of free speech. LiveJournal is committed to preserving as much free speech as possible for its users, as long as that speech does not cross the line into invading other users’ privacy.

Users are entitled to post about topics that may be abhorrent to much of the general population, so long as they do not cross the line into solicitation or instruction of illegal acts. We respectfully suggest, if the posts in this community disturb you, that you simply cease reading them.

Regards,
Morgan
LiveJournal Abuse Team

So basically LiveJournal doesn’t care that there are groups of people congregating within their virtual walls that share their fantasies about having sex with their daughter with other pedophiles. True story.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to these types of situations. The first one is let them operate out in the open so law enforcement can keep better tabs on them. Or drive them back to pre-internet days where instead of a global community of pedophiles there were only pockets of them where it was even more difficult to get to our children.

LiveJournal can either do one of two things. They can clear out the pedophiles from their membership or they can make LJ age restricted to 18+. The choice is theirs. I know one man isn’t going to change their mind but I’m about to become the sand in LiveJournals’ vagina.